Quick, I need a CR 20 trap

I'm running a 20th level one-shot Thursday at Gen Con. I need a CR 20 room trap that could affect the whole party.



The theme should be vaguely steamtech, and the premise is that the room has a teleportation beacon. If you try to teleport into the badguy's facility, you get shunted here, where death awaits. I'd imagine some sort of triggered dimensional lock or even forbiddance, followed by something nasty.

I don't need to actually kill the party, just force them to expend some resources to get out. They could always just dispel the forbiddance and then teleport out, which would take two rounds. I'm sure they could survive two rounds of, say, poison steam. Any other ideas?

I go to bed in an hour.
 

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Grinding gears + 10 foot deep acid + incorporeal undead + undertow portal to someplace really nasty (Paraelemental Ooze? The Negative Energy Plane?) + dimension lock = fun for the whole family.

Demiurge out.
 




Inside a room which is actually a huge advanced templated mimic. First thing that happens is that they're stuck to the ground, since the adhesive would have a godawfully huge Ref save to avoid. Second thing that happens is that the room exudes a couple of tongues and licks them (tentacles with different description). Hard.
 

Don't quote me on specific spells, I'm just the idea man. Here goes:

well it's a CR20 trap. That's pretty serious, meaning it has to be hard.

If a less than 5th level party went into the room, it would be sure defeat(the same as if they met a CR20 monster). So whatever happens, needs to be that tough.

As a CR20, it must have a pretty high Search DC, to help ensure the rogue doesn't see it. If the trap is mostly magical, that just makes sense anyway.

Since it is a rerouter, we could imagine that the owner wants to capture, not kill. On the other hand, any party that can teleport is pretty dangerous, and I know I'd kill them if I could with a squashing ceiling.

The room should have whatever spells it takes to prevent teleportation out, since that's how the party got in. An anti-magic field filling the room would work. Put a high ceiling in, have the shunt open up above the field (where it would work). The PCs fall 10 feet or so (taking 1d6 damage, tee hee) to the floor, and into the field. Work out the field size, and room height to make it all work. This would make an excellent means of detaining a party.

Of course, capturing the party on purpose violates my DMing code, so you need to make the escape available to counter this. Since this is a no-magic room, you'll need a no-magic exit, so the owner can extract the prisoners. Naturally, we'll have to expect the PCs to find this exit and use it to escape, but let's pretend the owner doesn't see that coming.

I'd put a hatch in the ceiling, wherein the owner can look in on his guests. He can also demand they put their gear in a basket (before he feeds them or lets them out). Then he can lower a rope ladder for the prisoners to climb out. That's the normal use...

I'd expect the PCs to try magic, and determine it doesn't work (in the lower half of the room). I'd expect them to search the walls for exits. I expect them to try climbing the walls (since it's a high ceiling room). Once they get up high enough, the hatch in the ceiling should be obvious to find. Make the hatch be of the iron bar variety if they have no climber (that way they can use a rope and grappel (or a dagger or something) to try and hook the hatch, so they can climb up and secure it better.

The walls smoothness should be based on the needs of the DM. If you've got a wall climber, make them fairly smooth. If the party couldn't climb out of bed, make them rough hewn. You can also make the walls angle in as they go upward (to thwart climbing (DC get's higher)).

I wouldn't make the trap heavily guarded, it's a fairly automated process, so who's going to get out? Just have it checked, as a regular point on the patrol.

Much of this trap is escapable for a rogue, not so much for other classes. That's kind of the point. Rogues exist to avoid and escape traps. But anybody else, should be hosed.

If the party figures out the extent of the magic field, they may figure out how to raise the wizard high enough where his spells work. Another viable solution could extend from there.
 

CR 20 Trap:

Consists of a 30' X 30' X 15' room with (12" thick, Hardness 8, 360 HP) iron walls coated by dried drippings of a pasty black substance. There are no light sources in this room.

A single medium sized iron door (4" thick, Hardness 8, 120 HP) in the middle of one of the walls. The door is locked with a precision lock (Open Locks DC 40).

The ceiling contains a single 5'X 5' opening topped with an iron grate (1" thick, Hardness 8, 30 HP). Hatch doors (4" thick, Hardness 8, 120 HP) that can be closed by steam powered gears are on either side of the opening. When closed, the hatches can be forced open with a DC 35 disable device check or a DC 30 strength check.

The floor consists of a large number of tightly fitting horizontal steel gears that turn against one another for no obvious purpose when viewed from the top. Underneath the floor is the main body of the trap mechanism which consists of; a reservoir of black lotus poison, a number of what look like frost covered ice trays made for arrowhead shaped ice-cubes and below that a some sort of coiled spring launching mechanism.

Wisps of warm steam constantly seep from between the gears, but the grate in the ceiling provides enough ventilation to keep the air in the room breathable, if a bit acrid smelling.

At the bottom of the room, beneath the gear floor and the trap mechanism is a thin layer of spent black lotus poison.

Trap Descriptions:

A visual sensor provides the trigger for the two traps that exist in this room. The trigger is of the "True Seeing & Darkvision" variety, so the lack of light does not prevent it from seeing the contents of the room. Additionally, invisibilty and illusions cannot be used to disguise the presence of creatures.

A spoken safe word prevents activation of the trap, but this safe word only works if spoken on the side of the iron door outside the room.

There are two traps in this room. The first is a modified dimensional lock that prevents all forms of dimensional travel into or out of the room once activated. The second is a frozen poison burst trap that does slashing damage and poisons the characters.

Modified Dimensional Lock: This spell functions just like dimensional lock but only lasts for one round/level instead of one day/level. The spell is centered at the center of the room. The CL is either 15 or the caster level of the highest spell caster available. This could be a lower level spell than the regular dimensional lock, but I'm going to leave it at eight. Remember, dimensional lock is subject to spell resistance. This trap resets at the end of its duration.

Frozen Poison Burst: This trap could probably be better described by a spell, but for the purposes of getting it to CR 20 I'm going to treat it like a mechanical trap. The trap works as follows. When any creature approaches within 10' of the iron door or the ceiling hatch the trap activates. The hatch in the ceiling closes and the coiled spring mechanism under the floor releases. Razor sharp shards of frozen black lotus extract shoot into the air from the ice tray looking things under the floor. The frozen poison shards briefly fill the entirety of the volume of the room and all creatures within it must make a reflex save (DC 30) or take 8d6 points of slashing damage. Additionally, all creatures in the room are poisoned with black lotus extract (Contact DC 20/3d6 Con/3d6 Con).

After the trap activates, the coiled spring mechanism resets and the ice trays are refilled from the poison reservoir and begin to refreeze. This is all accompanied by an increase in the amount of steam coming from between the gears that comprise the floor, causing visibility in the room to decrease to the point of being as if filled with a fog cloud spell.

Once the frozen poison burst trap has reset after one minute, the hatch in the ceiling opens and the steam exits through it, restoring visibility to the room.

Search DC 35, +2 CR
Disable Device DC 35, +2 CR
Reflex Save DC 30, +2 CR
Black Lotus Extract, +8 CR
Damage 8d6 Slashing, +4 CR
 

Four words: Sticky delayed blast fireball.

To make them steamtech, describe them as spheres that are brass on one side and a red glowing goo on the other, with the gooey side sticking to the body. Essentially, they're magical mines that drop from the ceiling and bounce around on the floor until they find a living being to stick to.

Dexterity check determines how many you get hit with, and everyone has, say, five rounds to get them off before they explode with no saving throw. And once they're off, they'll still explode. Hopefully the characters have a way of getting rid of them very, very fast.
 


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